Jewish New Year

For Orthodox Christians it’s Easter, for Catholics it’s Christmas, but what is the most important holiday for the Jews? New Year is the most significant event. According to the Gregorian calendar, the month of either September or October, also known as the Tishri month is welcoming the New Year. The Jewish New Year, however, has somewhat different customs from the traditional New Year most people around the world are used to.
Speaking of the Jewish New Year, I decided to interview one of my Jewish friends, Lacey Goldsher, who is a senior at the Hebrew High School of New England. I asked her to tell me more for their traditions for the new beginning in Jewish lives.

• How long do you celebrate New Year, or as you call it Rosh Hashanah?
It is a ten day long period during which almost every Jew is in high spirits and mood for the celebrations. Everything begins with the sundown of the first day and ends with the sundown of the tenth day.

• What does New Year mean to you and to the Jews in particular?
Our tradition speaks of a symbolic book in heaven which is said to have records of those who did good and bad deeds. On Rosh Hashanah, we must account to God for our behavior during the past year. We are given ten days before the New Year to show that we are sorry for any wrong doings we may have done. Personally, I perceive this day as a Day of Judgment.
What we are supposed to do is undo all wrong doings by performing good deeds and by thinking about how to live a better life in the future. If we are sincere, God is supposed to forgive us and he sets down and foretells each person's fate for the next year in the book.

• What was your New Year’s wish?
My biggest wish was probably a combination of three, important to me, concepts: good life, good health and prosperity. And I am more than sure that other Jews have similar, if not the same wish.

• How do celebrate your New Year?
In my family, it’s a tradition to send cards to each other with a message "May you be written down for a good year." We also exchange the same greetings the day before Rosh Hashanah, when we attend prayers at a local synagogue before returning home for a special New Year Eve meal.
The New Years Eve dinner has festival candles which are lit and the dining table is decorated with fresh fruit of the season, especially with grapes since our New Year is mostly in September. My mother prepares bread known as Challah and honey cake. Auspicious fruits dipped in honey are also served. The honey is supposed to symbolize sweet year. In my house, the main dish usually is a fish because it is a symbol of fruitfulness and plentitude. Other foods with a symbolic meaning may be served such as cooked tongue or other meat from the head of an animal to symbolize the “head” of the year.

• What else is special about the Jewish New Year beside the family dinner, the prayers and the card gifts?
A special service is held which ends in the blowing of the shofar. The shofar is a horn used for Jewish religious purposes. What usually happens is that 100 separate notes are blown on it. This is highly important ritual to the people who are too ill to attend the service try to find someone who will come to their place and will blow the shofar for them.